I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a lawn edger and more specifically, to a flywheel for a vertical drive shaft lawn edger.
II. Description of the Related Art
The present invention contemplates a new and improved vertical drive shaft lawn edger that is simple in design, effective in use, and overcomes the foregoing difficulties and others while providing better and more advantageous overall results. Lawn edgers are widely used in maintaining the appearance of lawns. They are primarily used to trim grass along the edges of driveways and curbs.
The prior art edgers typically use a horizontal output shaft that rotates a vertical cutting blade. A vertical drive pulley rotates a vertical driven pulley through a V-belt. The driven pulley rotates a vertical edger blade, which has a horizontal rotational axis. A vertical drive shaft engine has a horizontal driven pulley with a vertical rotational axis. In this arrangement, the V-belt is oriented to translate the vertical axis rotation of the drive pulley to the horizontal axis rotation of the driven pulley.
The horizontal drive shaft engine configuration is preferred since the pulleys and blade are oriented uniformly. However, lawn edgers with a horizontal drive shaft engine are very expensive. Lawnmower engines utilize a vertical drive shaft engine for obvious reasons and are less expensive. Lawnmower engines are manufactured in greater quantities and are less expensive. Therefore, lawn edgers utilizing a vertical drive shaft are desirable.
Prior art vertical drive shaft lawn edgers use engines that have a flywheel mounted to the drive shaft. The manufacturers of engines mount the flywheel to the drive shaft prior to shipping the engine to the manufacturer of the edger. Replacement of the flywheel often leads to replacing the engine. Therefore, when a flywheel becomes damaged during use a new engine is needed. Also, if a larger or smaller flywheel is needed, there is no interchangeability by the edger manufacturer. The edger manufacturer provides the output specifications to the engine manufacturer. Thereafter, the engine manufacturer produces an engine which meets the requirements given by the edger manufacturer.